Articles filed under Transmission from Europe

A total of 16 wind energy projects – with full planning permission and grid connection offers – “are at medium or high risk of not being built” ...The problem is arising because connection dates project developers have been offered are all for late 2019, according to IWEA chief executive Dr David Connolly. To qualify for renewable energy feed-in tariff (REFIT) schemes, they need to be built, connected and exporting electricity by March 31st, 2020.

Beginning in 2019, Norway’s water resources and energy directorate (NVE) wants firms benefiting from grid additions to pay up to half the investment cost, often a major sum in remote regions seeking to attract industry and jobs.

The energy firm behind one of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms has scrapped plans to build large electricity plants in the Norfolk countryside.
Vattenfall, which wants to build two wind farms around 50 kilometres off the east Norfolk coast, said today it will use more advanced technology which will mean a cable corridor it hopes to dig across the Norfolk countryside will be narrower. It also means no relay stations will be needed.

As more wind farms sprout up in Scotland an increasing amount of subsidy is being paid. The £51.5million subsidy paid to wind farms is more than double the £22.7million paid over the same three months last year.

Michael Fuchs, deputy chairman of the Christian Democrat party, joined fellow lawmakers in calling on the government to employ flexibility as early as this year in setting targets for clean energy growth, according to a three-page note dated Jan. 18 and sent to the chancellery.

Tenders for 700 MW of offshore wind will be delayed after the Dutch senate gave the thumbs-down to the new Electricity and Gas Act, which includes, among other matters, the plan for the offshore grid network.

Campaigners say that National Grid’s controversial 33-mile proposed pylon route between Cefn Coch and Oswestry costing an estimated £300 million is now under threat after Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom confirmed that windfarms at Llanbadarn Fynydd, Llaithddu, Llanbrynmair and Carnedd Wen were being refused.

The resistance is developing into a major headache for Merkel. It is dividing her coalition, undermining her most ambitious domestic policy, creating uncertainty for some of Germany's biggest companies, and threatening the goal of producing nearly half of all power from renewable sources by 2025 while remaining Europe's economic powerhouse.

Werner Dietrich, mayor of Grossenlüder, said his tolerance was running out. During the information meeting in his town, he drew on a traditional German expression to explain his frustration with the stream of energy projects. “Every few years we are chasing another pig through the village,” Mr. Dietrich said, to resounding applause.

The UK government's plan to build thousands of new off-shore wind turbines along the British coast are in doubt after energy regulators announced that wind farm companies do not have the right to force their way onto people's land to lay cables.

Fresh calls are being made for parts of the Brechfa Connection wind farm power lines route to be placed under ground on the outskirts of Carmarthen. Town councillors said the wooden H-frames proposed to cross the River Towy, near Abergwili Bridge, will be a blight on the landscape and affect the Towy Valley.

‘The falling value of land, farms and homes; loss of earnings in agriculture and tourism; health implications; the destruction of natural beauty spots; the conservation of local heritage – these are all very real fears that local communities now have.’

Councillors backed their current stance to oppose the plans vehemently on the grounds that communities across the area will still be affected. National Grid announced it plans to bury eight of the 33 miles of 400 kv line that will be needed if windfarm developers win permission to build a network of sites across north Powys through the Meifod valley between Welshpool and Oswestry.

But renewable companies argue that this system was brought in before many wind farms were built, and was designed to encourage generators to site fossil fuel power stations within reasonable distances of towns and cities. This option is not generally available to windfarms, which are often better sited on hills and offshore.

Opponents to the scheme, which is due for completion next year, say it will further industrialise the local landscape and encourage yet more wind farm projects in a region they claim to be already saturated. "If this goes through, the whole area is going to be industrialised."

Renewables already added a 47 percent surcharge to electric bills at the beginning of this year. Now we're going to see something worse. The big, power-consuming manufacturers have been exempted from these charges so they can stay competitive with the rest of the world, but everyone else is going to bear the brunt.

Germany considers itself the environmental conscience of the world: with its nuclear phase-out and its green energy transition, the federal government wanted to give the world a model to follow. However, blinded by its own halo Germany overlooked that others have to pay for this green image boost and are suffering as a result.

Insurers are increasingly concerned about the mounting number of expensive cable-installation claims in offshore wind projects, with the large number of incidents put down to a complex mix of human factors and technical issues.

Stay Updated

Contact Us

General Copyright Statement
Most of the sourced material posted to WindAction.org is posted according to the Fair Use doctrine of copyright law for non-commercial news reporting, education and discussion purposes. Some articles we only show excerpts, and provide links to the original published material. Any article will be removed by request from copyright owner, please send takedown requests to: info@windaction.org